Ten years ago, freshly married and freshly relocated to Vallejo, California, I found myself in the midst of reinvention. The cycle of post-doctoral fellowships and short-term contracts necessary for an academic career didn’t suit me. I wanted stability and, importantly, I wanted freedom. Crowdfunding was new. Earlier that summer, OpenROV had shook the crowdfunding world … Read More “Small drops make mighty oceans: 10 years as a scientist on Patreon” »
April was a slow month. Most of our lead writers were tied up with classes, workshops, and other projects and we only managed to publish 6 articles this month. That’s about a third of our regular output. On top of that, we had a server outage that took us offline for a a few days. … Read More “You probably don’t want to work for me: What you read on Southern Fried Science in April” »
Last week, Angelo spoke at thew 2024 Our Ocean Conference in Greece about going beyond 30×30 and how we equitably measure ocean success. You can also read his full prepared statement here: What I Meant to Say at Our Ocean Greece 2024
Canadian Masters students will now get up to $27,500 CAD a year, up from $17,500. Ph.D. students will get up to $40,000 CAD a year, up from as low as $20,000. Here’s how the leaders of Support Our Science did it. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. DS: Why was … Read More “Canadian grad students won their first raise in 20 years. Here’s how Support Our Science made it happen.” »
Dugongs and Seadragons is the only Dungeons and Dragons Podcast featuring actual marine science professionals playing D&D 5e while talking about marine science, conservation, and all things ocean. It’s been going for a long time, and jumping into the mid-point of an actual play podcast can feel like a daunting task. But we’ve got you … Read More “We Leased the Kraken! Catch up with the ongoing adventures of the Cephalosquad on Dugongs and Seadragons.” »
The great strength of 30×30, the national goal to protect 30 percent of the ocean by 2030, is that it sets out a framework wherein there is agreement that our shared use of public lands and waters fall along a spectrum, ranging from sacred places to wise use.
Our field is competitive, some job postings are confusing, and some career advice is contradictory or wrong. Here’s an exercise I have my students perform that I hope can help you. Graphic via Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see a heartbreaking post from a prospective marine biologist in … Read More “Here’s what I teach my students about finding jobs in marine biology and conservation” »
Last month, I wrote a heartwarming little story about how doing a fun weekend hardware project with my daughter led to fixing one of the most annoying non-critical problems with the OpenCTD. After a month of testing, we have fully implemented the new power management system into the next iteration of the OpenCTD. Currently, there … Read More “Charging the OpenCTD is annoying, so we fixed it.” »
After a trio of very widely read articles triggered a traffic surge in February, including David’s critical expert analysis of cross-order hybridization, our visitor count normalized a bit on the old ocean science and conservation blog. A little more than 19,500 people visited Southern Fried Science in March, a roughly 50% increase from January. You … Read More “Space Crabs, Big Boats, and Fake Sharks: What you read on Southern Fried Science in March” »
A new study shows how unique cells full of crystals give this ray one of the brightest blue colors in nature Photo of Dr. Shahrouz Amini, MPI Potsdam, photographing a ray’s blue spots Coral reef fishes come in all the colors of the rainbow (and perhaps even in some colors that we can’t see). But … Read More “How the Bluespotted Ribbontail Stingray got its Spots” »